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This week our regular Ligue 1 expert Genesis is back to update you on his performance in the Academy so far this season. You can find him on Twitter as @FiGenesis.
Stack and forget?
The experiment
This week I’m going to update you on a very unscientific experiment I’ve been doing on the Academy game. I made reference to it the last time I wrote here. Put simply, I will be entering a PSG stack each main Gameweek, as I wanted to see how an ‘overpowered’ stack would do in the game and explore the tactical decisions that someone stacking would and should still have to consider.
PSG have been on fire in recent weeks with Neymar, Lionel Messi et all in scary form. However, it’s not been quite as easy as ‘stack and forget’!
The PSG juggernaut
PSG under Christoph Galtier should be all but unstoppable in the league (and strong in Europe too). The stats bear this out for the season so far.
Including the Trophee des Champions, PSG have scored 22 and conceded just four in five games. They average nine shots on target per game. Neymar alone has six goals and six assists to date.
They do still leak chances but, whilst I expect Galtier to improve this as the weeks go by, this is actually good for goalkeeper scoring on the matrix (more opportunity for the ‘keeper to make saves etc). PSG also pass the ball a lot, retaining 69% possession on average and making over 590 passes per game.
That looks like juggernaut potential on the Sorare scoring matrix right? Well…
In short, I’ve not won a thing! The stack has hit two big scores so far. In the four Gameweeks since Ligue 1 began (Sorare Gameweeks 294, 296, 298 and 300), it’s achieved a top 12% finish (GW294), a top 26% finish (GW298) and top 73% and 76% finishes (ahem GW 296 and GW300). That’s with scores of 417, 330, 421 and 281.
I was seriously let down by Mbappe last week!
What about if I was playing those cards in the main Sorare game instead? If we transpose that into Sorare’s Champion Europe Rare for the same Gameweeks the stack would have secured 20th, 342nd, 56th and 768th consecutively. That’s okay. But not brilliant. Especially if I’d actually forked out for these rare cards for real!
So why the mixed results so far?
Let’s look at my player selection. Gianluigi Donnarumma is fixed. Marquinhos has played the first two Gameweeks but I’ve switched to Achraf Hakimi for the last two. Marco Verratti is also fixed in midfield; this is the weak link. And until GW300 it was Neymar and Messi in the final two spots. Kylian Mbappe made his one and only appearance in the stack for GW300 instead of Messi. And, as you might expect, the stack’s big scores tally with PSG’s own big performances. GW294 saw PSG best Clermont 5-0 and 298 was the 7-1 drilling of Lille. However, even then, it couldn’t hit the top spots in the Academy or Champion Europe Rare.
The key factor comes down tactical points of note in manager Christophe Galtier’s system. He deploys three centre-backs. Marquinhos is almost always the deepest lying, while Presnel Kimpembe and Sergio Ramos have license to push very high into the opposition half. That’s great for final third passes and even penalty area entries. But not really for Marquinhos. My first error.
The full-backs are aggressive and create chances. Thus my switch to Hakimi. Veratti and Vitinha are metronomic in midfield but without license to create in the final third. They shuttle the ball to the front three and are thus, not very scoring friendly. Verratti is the second big weakness in the stack. The front three are, as expected, gold. Especially Messi and Neymar who have huge all-around scoring capacity.
Four Gameweeks in the books and no major results of note in the Academy just yet for the PSG stack. So far, so meh. They face Nantes this weekend, who might put up a bit more of a fight than they did in the 4-0 PSG win in the Trophee des Champions. Expect Hakimi and Nuno Mendes to have some joy down the flanks and PSG to have a stacks of possession. That’ll be good news for the two wide centre-backs.
It’ll be interesting to see if Galtier rotates midfield with so many more players to choose from. For now the midfield remains a problem. I’d expect the front three to score well still, create lots of chances and score at least two. That is unless Paul Pogba’s witch doctor curse continues to hamper Mbappe’s flow!
I’ll keep the ‘experiment’ running all season and see how we do, keeping you posted along the way. We need a bigger sample size!
So please keep following along – and don’t forget to set your team before Friday’s 11am deadline.
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